Foodstuffs North Island is using Unimogs, helicopters and boats to get supplies of essential goods to communities cut off by the ravages of Cyclone Gabrielle. 

The company has urged consumers to buy only what they need as it works to get supplies in – a massive challenge in Hawkes Bay and East Cape especially where main highways look set to be closed for days if not weeks, due to washouts, collapsed bridges and landslides.    

“To everyone affected, please know our teams have been working around the clock,” Foodstuffs North Island CEO Chris Quin said. “We’ve got the stock, we’ve got the plan and we’ve got the means to get essential items to you as we support your towns and communities to recover.”

As of Monday, all Pak’nSave and New World stores have reopened. 

Seven smaller Four Squares in Hawkes Bay have not yet been able to open.

On Friday, the company was “heartbroken” by the news that one of its staff was among the eight confirmed victims of the cyclone. Marie Greene, who lost her life at home, worked on the checkouts at the New World Greenmeadows store in Napier and was described as “a generous and kind people-person who was much loved by her team-mates”. 

Quin said the biggest logistics hurdle the company was trying to overcome was road access across the two regions.  

“To get stock through in the past 24 hours we’ve used back roads, Unimogs and we’ve contracted a helicopter that can lift two to three tonnes to get essentials like toilet paper and water into stores that cannot yet get deliveries by road,” he said.  

“Replenishing isolated communities is our absolute focus. While there’s lots of great work going on to clear slips and reopen roads, people need the essentials now. We have a plan to re-open each store and we have the required stock and resources to make it happen.”

Foodstuffs’ Hastings depot – about 20km from Napier – is being used as a staging point with the helicopter helping shift up to 40 pallets of stock and technology, such as Starlink kits for connecting to the internet, into the communities of Wairoa – and further north to Tokomaru Bay, Tologa Bay and Ruatoria in the East Cape region.  

Meanwhile, on the Coromandel Peninsula, the 9m boat Waka Kai – owned and operated by New World Whitianga – has been delivering essential goods to communities that have been left without access to grocery stores due to damaged roads and other infrastructure. The team has been visiting nine different places: Opito Bay, Kuatotunu, Matarangi, Whangapoua, Kennedy Bay, Cooks Beach, Hahei, Tairua and Pauanui.

Kerry Stanley, the owner-operator of New World Whitianga, launched Waka Kai in 2019 as a summer offering to help locals and holidaymakers beat traffic.

“After the cyclone, as soon as it became safe, I wanted to get Waka Kai out on the water to check people were OK and to help resupply our cut-off communities,” he said. “To give you an idea, there are about 500 people who live at Cooks Beach which is just 3km from Whitianga by sea, compared to 35km of road that’s now full of slips. 

“Our first day was quite emotional and challenging. We had debris to get through and were the first people from the ‘outside world’ some of these communities had seen or heard from for four days.” 

Meanwhile, Foodstuffs’ HereforNZ team is working with community partners like Civil Defense Centres, Foodbanks, Social Supermarkets, City Missions, community trusts and charities like Butter Bean Motivation to provide support to people who urgently need food and other essentials. Quin said the company has given at least $260,000 worth of food and goods to our partners.  

“A huge shout out to our incredible teams for their heroic work and for continuing to go the extra mile every hour, while we make sure we get essentials to New Zealanders to recover from the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle,” he concluded.

Rival Countdown has given $200,000 and is donating critical products to organisations providing support on the ground.

Just one of its stores remained closed as of Thursday – Countdown Carlyle in Napier South. 

Countdown management has asked customers to buy only the supplies they need and to be considerate to each other and to team members in-store.